A letter to Edward Hitchcock in which Benjamin Silliman thanks Hitchcock for a plaster cast of a bird foot and requests that he make more at Silliman's expense. Silliman says he has received letters recently from Charles Lyell, Reverend W. D. Conybeare (William Conybeare), and Gideon Mantell, and he also discusses the appropriate spelling of the term "Ornithichnites," which is a type of footprint fossil.

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